GoKawiilLast year, psychologist Lee Chambers set off across the United Kingdom to listen to boys. In his work training companies in equality, he had met hundreds of parents who said they were concerned that boys were struggling after the COVID-19 pandemic and being manipulated online. So he decided to go and find out what the lives of 12–16-year-olds are really like.
The results of this research, which included the views of more than 1,000 adolescents, revealed boys’ frustrations with the modern world1. More than 80% said there aren’t enough real-world spaces — such as parks or youth clubs — to be a boy. More than half found the online world more rewarding than the physical one. And nearly 80% said they were not clear what masculinity is. “It’s toxic, that’s all I ever hear,” said one participant.
The idea that boys and young men are struggling is not a new concern — but the hand-wringing has intensified over the past few years. Globally, more boys than girls are out of school and young men are less likely than young women to attend higher education. Boys and young men tend to have fewer close connections and less emotional support than do girls and young women, surveys suggest, and many feel under pressure to conform to stereotypical ideas of masculinity and body image. Last year’s hit Netflix show Adolescence triggered widespread concern that teenage boys were being drawn into the ‘manosphere’, a network of male-focused, often misogynistic online spaces. Some “people would say that boys are in crisis”, says Matt Englar-Carlson, a specialist in counselling and director of the Center for Boys and Men at California State University, Fullerton.
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It is uncomfortable and sometimes controversial to talk about a male ‘crisis’ in the face of entrenched and often worsening discrimination against girls and women. No country in the world has achieved gender equality — and one in four reported a backlash against women’s rights in 2024. “I agree with this ‘crisis for boys’, but for many outcomes, things still look much worse for adolescent girls,” says Sarah Baird, a health researcher at the George Washington University in Washington DC. Some people worry that the ‘boys in crisis’ framing worsens the situation by encouraging young men to view themselves as victims of gender equality — feeding resentment and hostile views. Creating “moral outrage amongst boys that the world’s against them” can fuel frustrations, says Chambers, who founded a non-profit group called Male Allies UK based in Preston, UK.
Rather than focusing on boys’ troubles, say researchers, it’s important to understand the challenges that all young people are facing. “I think this failure to see adolescent boys as a vulnerable group has been problematic for both boys and girls,” Baird says.
She and others argue that studying and investing in all adolescents is crucial, especially now. “The world is quite challenging for boys when it’s not really clear what the future is going to be like or what’s always expected of them,” says Chambers. And, as his listening tour showed, they are trying to work this out in various ways. “Some were trying to change the world,” he says. “Others were wanting to burn the whole world down.”
Educational gaps
In 2022, a first-of-its-kind global data analysis on boys’ disengagement from education2 was published by the United Nations cultural and education organization UNESCO. Girls are more likely to never enter school, it said, but boys are more likely to not progress and not complete secondary school. (The binary terms ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ are used in this article to reflect language used in studies and by interviewees.)
The sizes of and trends in gender gaps vary from one country to the next, but some of the most consistent patterns favouring women are seen in higher education (see ‘Changing education gaps’). UNESCO estimated in 2025 that 80 young men were enrolled in university for every 100 young women in about 40 countries3. In the United States, men received 41.5% of bachelor’s degrees in 2021–22 compared with 57% in 1969–70.
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